New Year's Resolutions

So I was totally going to blow off any sort of new year's resolutions this year- it's hard enough being on study abroad without having to worry about improving yourself.

But then my pop sent me an email with a list of 50 resolutions.
Organized into sections, a few bullet points caught me eye:

(HEALTH)
1. Drink plenty of water.
2. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar.
3. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants, and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
4. Live with the 3 Es- Energy, Enthusiasme and Empathy.
5. Make time to pray.
6. Play more games.
7. Read more books.
8. Sit in silence for at lease 10 minutes per day.
9. Sleep for 7 hours.
10. Take a 10-30 minutes walk daily, and while you walk, smile.

(PERSONALITY)
1. Don't compare your life to others. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
2. Invest your energy in the positive present moment.
3. Don't over do. Keep your limits.
4. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
5. Dream more while you are awake.
6. Forget issues of the past.
7. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone.
8. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
9. Smile and laugh more.

(SOCIETY)
1. Call your family often.
2. Spend time with people over the age of 70 and under the age of 6.
3. Try to make at least 3 people smile each day.
4. What other people think of you is none of your business.
5. Stay in touch. (... because your job won't take care of you when you are sick.)

(LIFE)
1. Do the right thing.
2. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.
3. The best if yet to come.
4. Be happy.


... So after reading through these, I realized:

A) that I definitely need to be more selfish and aware about my health.
No more drinking excessive amounts of tap water. I have a SteriPen (to sterilize the water)- it's portable (not much bigger than three or four ballpoint pens bound together), and it can now fit in my water bottle.
No more thinking, a-la-Senegalese, that soap is not always necessary. Britta (the student in a village close to mine) and I have a total of 99 fluid ounces of hand sanitizer to use between the two of us. This means I can indulge myself and wash my hands BEFORE and AFTER a meal. And after work. And after the beach. And basically whenever I want.
No more shrugging off illness. Stepping off of the plane, I was diagnosed with strep and walking pneumonia. Great. I had had a sore throat and a heavy cough for three weeks, and I just didn't think anything of it.
No more sharing. This makes me sound mean, and maybe I am, but I just don't want to share spoons and a communal cup and single pieces of hard candy. I just don't want to anymore!

B) that I can make my experience less stressful and thus more pleasant.
No more worrying about forgetting people's names. I can ask them again, and the sooner I get over the offense, the sooner I can actually learn their name. And besides, 5 weeks away has given me the perfect excuse.
No more expecting to simply wake up one day and be perfect in Wolof. I either do or don't want to learn it. And so if I do, then I gotta start putting in the work.
No more complaining about my lack of a social life. If I can't have a life outside of the house after dark, then I will just have to change my schedule. And so I can start going for walks in the morning, and stopping by friends' houses on the way home for work. Then just embrace my host family from 7pm until 11pm when it's time for bed.

C) that Senegal is already making me see the good in a lot of these things.
Even though the Senegalese will always eat breakfast like a beggar, lunch like a king, and dinner like prince - nobody could change their eating habits, and I will personally huntdown anyone who tries to do away with the lunch feast of cheep bu jen (rice and fish, yum!)...
Everything is made from scratch, pratically. And in Sokone, the fish is generally the catch of the day.
And Senegal definitely knows how to take time to pray, play, read and sleep. Sitting in silence is a question of hours, not minutes.
And the multigenerational family unit is simply how it's done. No extra thought needed.

So enough about resolutions. This post is already too sappy, and it needs to end.

Happy New Year! Joyeux Noel! Dewenati!